Spotify is the first name that comes to mind when you think of music streaming services. Love it or hate it, Spotify is currently the most popular music-streaming service, boasting 615 million users and more than 239 million subscribers, putting it ahead of competitors like Apple Music. But what exactly is Spotify, and how does it really work? We’re answering all your questions with this deep dive into what you can expect from Spotify.
What is Spotify?
If you spend even a little time online, you’ve probably heard of Spotify. It’s a popular free and paid music-streaming service founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Swedish friends Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. Fun fact: the name happened by fluke when the partners were shouting names back and forth from different rooms in Ek’s Stockholm flat, and Ek misheard one of Lorentzon’s suggestions as “Spotify.” They later backtracked the meaning as a combination of spot and identify, and there you have it.
Spotify today is a behemoth of a streaming service that also offers access to podcasts, videos, and highly tailored playlists driven by your unique usage. With several plan tiers to choose from, Spotify’s free version lets you listen to unlimited music, podcasts, and even videos, so you can explore your taste without shelling out a thing, but you do have to endure ads and limited functionality (more on that below). It does offer much more robust paid options (more below, too), but the free version is more than enough for the casual listener.
Spotify is also quite device-versatile, so you can use it on your smartphone, tablet, computer, laptop, TV, smartwatch, gaming console, and even in your car. You get the expected, intuitive controls like play/pause, next/previous, loop a song/playlist, and save favorites. But that’s not all. There’s a lot that Spotify offers, so let’s break down what you can look forward to.
Spotify features: music, podcasts, audiobooks, and more
